Re: Fuzzy search

> First, I have Oracle 8.1.7.
>
> My "customer" has requested that they be able to retrieve only the correct records from the database where they do not know exactly
> how the data was entered. The are referring to it as a fuzzy search.
>
> For example, the want to retrieve info from a customer database by customer name. The entry in the database is 'A B C Corp'
>
> They want to be able to retrieve the record if the type in any of the following:
>
> A. B. Corp
> A.B. Corp
> AB Corp
> A.B Corp, etc.
>
> I currently use SPs to retrieve the records from a VB program. Is there something I could add to the SP to provide this
> functionality without severely effecting performance?

Al Reid,

I had a similar problem (although not exactly the same) with searching for german names. To solve it, I have written a function for fuzzy searching. You find it on my homepage: at http://www.adp-gmbh.ch/ora/plsql/fuzzy_search.html

hth
Rene

-- 
  Rene Nyffenegger
  http://www.adp-gmbh.ch